Video Transcript - Forensic Anthropology – Bone Whispering
Video Transcript – Forensic Anthropology – Bone WhisperingMaggy Benson:[00:00:30] Can skeletons speak? A special group of scientists called forensicanthropologists say that yes, they can. But how do we understand the languageof bones. Forensic anthropologists know how to investigate human remains toprovide evidence for law enforcement. They also examine human skeletons andthe objects found with them to learn about people, how they lived in the past,and stories that may otherwise remain untold. We'll learn more about this work[00:01:00] today when we meet with Kari Bruwelheide, a forensicanthropologist from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.Maggy Benson:Hi, thanks for joining us. I'm Maggy Benson, host of Live from Q?rius,Smithsonian Science How? We have a really interesting story about forensicanthropology for you today. Before we dive in, I want to ask you a question. Youcan respond using the poll window that appears to the right of your videoscreen.Maggy Benson:[00:01:30] If you found bones in the ground, what would you do? Would you digthem up and study them yourself? Run the other way and keep it a secret? Orcall the police and let them know? Take a moment to think about it.Maggy Benson:It looks like a lot of you are responding that you would call the police. That'sreally interesting. Let's go to out special guest to find out what she may havedone. [00:02:00] Today we have with us forensic anthropologist KariBruwelheide from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. HiKari.Kari Bruwelheide:Hi!Maggy Benson:Thanks for joining us.Kari Bruwelheide:Thank you for having me.Maggy Benson:To kick things off, can you actually just tell us what a forensic anthropologist is?Kari Bruwelheide:Sure. A forensic anthropologist is somebody who studies human remains,usually bones, and maybe even retrieves them when they're found to determinewho that person was, how they lived, and also [00:02:30] possibly how theydied. The techniques that we use to study bones are applied to bones of anyage. So even though forensic anthropologist applies to people who typicallywork with law enforcement to solve forensic cases in the present day, we goback and study bones thousands of years old to get the same types ofinformation.Kari Bruwelheide:Most people don't know that the museum here has over 30,000 sets of humanremains.Page 1 of 11
Maggy Benson:Wow.Kari Bruwelheide:[00:03:00] Those are used not only to solve crimes in the present, but also tolearn more about our past, and to train the next generation of forensicscientists.Maggy Benson:So can I ask, when you were in middle school or high school, what would youhave done if you had found bones while digging or maybe in the woods oneday?Kari Bruwelheide:Right. Well, when I was in middle school, the field of forensic anthropology wasnot as well known as it is today, so I had no idea what I would do. I probablywould have run the other way. But [00:03:30] today, we have so many TVshows, so many news programs about forensics that really, it's a new field, butit's one that's very well known today and very popular.Maggy Benson:So you've brought a lot of objects here for us to look at today. Can you tell usabout something that you've brought?Kari Bruwelheide:Yes. I've brought some very special objects from our collections. This one, inparticular, is special to us because this is a real forensic case that wedocumented and actually presented [00:04:00] the evidence in court, andconvicted an individual on this case. We determined that this person was awhite female, 25 to 29 years old. We were able to get a positive identificationon her, and determine that the cause of death was from being beaten, and thenput into a well while she was still alive.Kari Bruwelheide:Again, that was a powerful piece of evidence in a court of law that was used. Sowe're able to get a [00:04:30] lot of information from the skeleton.Maggy Benson:Wow, that's so interesting that you were able to learn so much and ultimatelyget a conviction. Can you tell us how you read these bones? How do you knowthat information?Kari Bruwelheide:Yeah. There're lots of clues hidden in bones, you just have to know where tolook. One of the basic pieces of information we first collect is age. For her, wewent first to the teeth. That is absolutely the best way to tell the age of a personfrom the time that they're born, [00:05:00] even in utero, up to the time they'reabout early 20s because their teeth are still developing and growing. If you lookat her teeth, she has eruption of all of her teeth. She even has a loss of her thirdmolar.Kari Bruwelheide:But when you look at younger people, their teeth are still developing. This is amandible, the same bone, of a young person, and it still has teeth that areunerupted. So you can estimate age within about a year. If you have somebodywho has [00:05:30] no teeth, as this individual shows, we call that edentulous,Page 2 of 11
that indicates, typically, an older person. But there are also things in life that cancause loss of teeth at a younger age.Kari Bruwelheide:Another important area to look at for determining age that we used on thisperson was looking at growth plates. Now, just like teeth develop and growthroughout somebody's lives, you have areas of bone that, as you grow, theyhave not yet fused together.Maggy Benson:[00:06:00] So it grows from this end.Kari Bruwelheide:Right. The growth occurs from the ends of your bones. This is a femur. This is atyour knee. That's why kids often have growing pains in their knee. It's actuallythis growth plate that's creating more bones. At certain times, these growthplates will lock together, and then you'll be done growing. So we know whatstages that occurs, and we can estimate age from that.Kari Bruwelheide:Another important piece of information is sex. How do we tell [00:06:30] is thisis a female or male? Again, you have to know what bones to look for features ofmales or females. The absolute best area to go to determine sex is the pelvisbecause women can do something that men can never do, and that is give birth.If you first look at these two pelvises, you can see that they look pretty identical.Maggy Benson:Yeah.Kari Bruwelheide:But close observation of certain areas on the bones, the front, [00:07:00] theside, you begin to note differences. For the female, a combination of thosefeatures allow that baby to pass through the pelvic inlet, versus in males, that'sjust not going to be possible. So when we look for sex, we go to the hip bones,and we look for those areas to determine male or female characteristics.Maggy Benson:So these are the same angles that are different [00:07:30] on the ones that youjust showed us.Kari Bruwelheide:Yeah. But again, you don't always have all the bones of a skeleton. Sometimesyou're missing elements. In that case, you can refer to other areas. As I said, thiswas a female, so in looking at her skull, we can also see traits indicative of beinga female. The front here, the brow ridges are very undeveloped, they're verygracile, they look petite, versus [00:08:00] this individual, who is a male, and hehas very developed brow ridges. These are where muscles attach.Kari Bruwelheide:So if you look at the back of the head as well, and you can even feel where yourneck muscles join with your skull, you will get an area known as the nuchalcrest. In females, if you can take a side shot, this will be, move my hands here,very smooth. Back here, she does [00:08:30] not have a well-developed crest,versus this (other) individual, you can even see a little protuberance, a hook.Those muscles, this piece of bone here behind your ear, in men, it's going to bePage 3 of 11
very large. Again, it's where a muscle attaches. In women, this is going to besmall.Kari Bruwelheide:So age, sex, and then different marks on bones that tell us possibly how aperson died or how they lived are very important. You want me to show you[00:09:00] some?Maggy Benson:Yeah, I would love that.Kari Bruwelheide:Okay. When marks occur in bone and you're still alive, you survive the incident,these are called antemortem injuries. This is an incredible fracture that occurredin the femur of an individual, and the bones healed, they remodeled. So weknow that this person survived and lived for a longer period of time after theinjury.Maggy Benson:That looks incredibly painful. That's not what a properly healed bone looks like,is it?Kari Bruwelheide:No. This person wouldn't [00:09:30] have gone to the doctor. Now, if we look atthis individual, our forensic case, as I said, she had injuries that occurred at thetime of death. Look at her break. There's no healing that occurred to join thesebones together. This occurred at the time of death. This is a perimortem injury.Kari Bruwelheide:You can see that is similar to this individual, who has marks [00:10:00] on-Maggy Benson:Right here.Kari Bruwelheide:. their bones that have not remodeled or healed. These also occurred at thetime of death, and you can tell that, too, by color. That's something I didn'tmention, is the color of that fractured surface is similar to the outside surface,so we know that that bone injury occurred at the time of death, versus if youlook at this bone here, that break is much lighter in color, so that occurred manyyears after death. That's a postmortem [00:10:30] injury.Maggy Benson:Wow, so I can't believe how much information that you can get just from thebones themselves. Do you use any other tools or technology?Kari Bruwelheide:Yes. We use lots of different tools because what we can see with our eyes, wecall that gross observation, is very limited. So we use tools to get deeper intothe bones. One of those tools is microscopy. You see an image on the screenhere of a scanning election microscope, and that's a [00:11:00] picture of atooth, but you actually can pick out striations on the enamel. It's so detailed.Kari Bruwelheide:Other tools that we use would be x-rays. In that case, we're not looking at thesurface, but we're looking internally into the bone. That gives you informationon maybe dental development, what teeth are developing inside the bone. Italso gives you information on bone density, which might give clues to a person'sPage 4 of 11
age or health. We also [00:11:30] use CT analysis, CAT scanning. I don't know ifyou've ever heard that term. But that allows us to look inside even an object likeyou see here. That individual was in an iron coffin. We didn't even have to openthe coffin. We were able to penetrate the burial container and look at thatindividual, and get his age. We could even see other features of how he wasdressed.Kari Bruwelheide:There are lots of tools.Maggy Benson:Wow.Kari Bruwelheide:Also, now, [00:12:00] we're going even deeper and looking at the chemistry ofbones to learn how people ate, their diets, and also getting their DNA.Maggy Benson:Wow, that's really interesting. So a lot of different tools and a lot of grossobservations.Kari Bruwelheide:Yes.Maggy Benson:We have a question, actually, from Dyson from New York.Kari Bruwelheide:Okay.Maggy Benson:Ready to take it?Kari Bruwelheide:Yes.Maggy Benson:All right. Dyson would like to know, how can you figure out what the personlooked like?Kari Bruwelheide:Ah, well that deals with forensic facial reconstruction. I [00:12:30] actuallybrought a model at the end of the table there that shows a half reconstructedface, and an unreconstructed model underneath. Basically, we know how deepour tissues are on our faces, and we vary that by the age of the person, theirancestry, and also their sex. Are they a man or a woman? We can use the tissuedepths to put tissue markers and rebuild the person's likeness. And [00:13:00]things that you wouldn't think would be able to tell from the bone, things likethe size of the nose, or the wideness of the mouth, they're all based onstructures of the skull underneath.Maggy Benson:Oh, that's so interesting. So with all of these observations and tools andtechnology that you're using, you're really being able to go from something thatyou're finding in the ground to really being able to put a face to those bones.Kari Bruwelheide:Yes. Facial reconstruction is really powerful.Page 5 of 11
Maggy Benson:Wow. I [00:13:30] really feel like I have a grasp on what a forensicanthropologist is now. Let's go to some of your research here at theSmithsonian. I know that you've worked in Jamestown a little bit.Kari Bruwelheide:Yeah, for the past, wow, two decades now, we've been doing-Maggy Benson:Longer than a little bit!Kari Bruwelheide:. yeah, a lot of work on early colonial sites in the Chesapeake. They'reimportant because for that first 100 years of settlement, from 1607 atJamestown, up until the 1700s, very little was written [00:14:00] down. So whatwe have is the archeology, what we can find, and then what we can interpret.One of the pieces of evidence regarding that is the human skeleton. We havelooked at the burials of numerous colonists, but also Africans who were broughtto this region, and were able to piece together their stories that were neverwritten down.Kari Bruwelheide:At Jamestown, it's particularly exciting because that was a colony that almost[00:14:30] dissolved.Maggy Benson:How?Kari Bruwelheide:Well, during one period in time, there was a lot of starvation, particularly duringone winter, and there was also a lot of violence and turmoil. So 80% of thepeople who arrived one winter did not survive. And figuring out why thatoccurred, what these colonists were dealing with is really something that onlycan be answered in the bones.Maggy Benson:So I understand that you've actually [00:15:00] brought a real case fromJamestown here today for us to analyze together, and with our viewers online.Kari Bruwelheide:Yes. We're going to talk about a particular find or discovery at Jamestown thatjust was brought to light about a year ago. These were bones that were found ina trash pit. It wasn't an actual grave or burial, and not a whole skeleton wasfound. All that was found of this individual [00:15:30] was partial crania, andyou can see that on your screen. The bones were in all separate pieces. Then inthe corner of the screen are the bones from the top of a leg that were alsorecovered.Maggy Benson:Were they all in the same trash pile?Kari Bruwelheide:They were in a trash pile with debris that's dated to this starving time winter atJamestown, 1609, 1610.Maggy Benson:Interesting. So what can we solve here with you [00:16:00] today having justthat limited amount of artifact?Page 6 of 11
Kari Bruwelheide:Well, again, based on what I talked about earlier, the basic types of informationwe can collect, one of the first questions that we could answer is how old is thisperson, and are they a male or a female?Maggy Benson:Great. So I understand we're going to ask a series of questions of our audienceright now, and you can lead us through the discovery. I guess we'll start withage?Kari Bruwelheide:Yes, why don't we start with age. [00:16:30] Because we have the skull, one ofthe things that we're going to look at is the teeth, the dentition of this person tosee if there are any clues that can tell us how old they were. Here you have theupper jaw and the lower jaw, and you can see that the teeth are mostly allthere, with the exception of the third molar. I don't see that, but if you lookclosely at the bottom jaw, that's on the right hand side, you can see the littlesurface of the tooth. [00:17:00] So this person had an unerupted third molar.Maggy Benson:Interesting. So we have a poll up there for you now. Let us know if you think thiswas of a young child, a teenager, or maybe an adult. It looks like a lot of you,83% of you are responding that it is a teenager. What do you think about thatresponse?Kari Bruwelheide:Well, I think that's a great response because they're right. This is a teenager, andactually, we can look at the stage of formation of that [00:17:30] third molarinside the bone by looking at her x-ray, or its x-ray, and we can tell that it isabout, well just the root of the tooth is starting to form. Based on growthstandards, that's a 13 to 14 year old person.Maggy Benson:Wow, interesting. So we know that it's a young teenager.Kari Bruwelheide:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Maggy Benson:What else can we learn?Kari Bruwelheide:Well, we want to find out if this is a boy or a girl. So one of the things that welook at, of course, we don't have the hip [00:18:00] bones, which would havebeen the best way to determine sex, so we're going to look at features on thecranium and on the mandible. But if you look at this cranium, and alsoremembering what you saw on the screen, look for those areas on the skull thatI pointed out that ha the muscles attached, you can see the mastoid here is verysmall, it's undeveloped. Part of that is age because this is a young teenager. Butalso, the forehead [00:18:30] has very little development of the brow ridges,and the back of the skull is very smooth, there is no defined crest where themuscles attached in the back.Maggy Benson:So let us know what you think. Is this a boy or a girl? Again, I think we havesome pretty good answers out there. 88 percent think it is a girl.Page 7 of 11
Kari Bruwelheide:It is. I might have given that away because I refer to it as a her! But is a young[00:19:00] woman, about 13 to 14 years of age. Again, that correspondsbeautifully with the piece of leg bone that was found because that also has anopen growth plate. We talked about those growth plates. So this person wasstill growing when they died.Maggy Benson:Interesting. So what's next?Kari Bruwelheide:Well, let's figure out why these bones were not in a typical burial, what gotthem to being thrown away in a trash pit. We look for marks on the bone thatmight help us solve that [00:19:30] mystery. One of the first areas on thecranium that we saw these marks were the forehead. So maybe your studentscan look at these marks here, those roughly parallel four marks on the forehead,and that is a good clue, or a starting point to determine what happened to thisperson.Maggy Benson:You're thinking right now at home what caused those marks on those bones. Isit from animal scavenging? [00:20:00] Was it caused by some kind of tool orweapon? Or maybe damage from excavation when he was dug up?Maggy Benson:It looks like we have 75% have said B, impacts from tools or weapons. What doyou think about that?Kari Bruwelheide:Well, that's a great answer because that's what we thought too. If you look veryclosely, you can see the internal areas of those marks are dark in color. If theywere lighter, they would [00:20:30] have been made by a trowel of theexcavator, but they're not, they were made at the time or near the time ofdeath. You can also actually get the imprint of the tool that made them if youlook close enough. So we do think these are made by tools.Maggy Benson:Why would there be tool marks on her head? That's a little disturbing.Kari Bruwelheide:It is disturbing, and you have to think of the context of the time. Again, I saidthat she was found in remains from the starving time [00:21:00] period. It wascalled the starving time because people had very little to eat, they wereresorting to drastic measures. Now, you might think, "Well, did these marks killher? Are they evidence of death?"Maggy Benson:Yeah.Kari Bruwelheide:Well, these marks on the forehead here actually would not have killed her. Theydo not penetrate the bone. But if you look at other areas of the skull, you startto see a pattern. If you look at the back of her head, you see these forcefulchops made. We know [00:21:30] that these frontal marks were made firstbecause there would have been no reason to chop the back of the head beforeyou attempted to do it at the front.Page 8 of 11
Maggy Benson:The front was successful.Kari Bruwelheide:We also can look at how these are arranged. So let me ask you a question. Doyou think
Forensic anthropologists know how to investigate human remains to provide evidence for law enforcement. They also examine human skeletons and the objects found with them to learn about people, how they lived in the past, and stories that may otherwise remain untold. We'll learn more about this work
FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY: A PRIMER FOR COURTS 3 Contents 1. Introduction and scope 6 2. Definition of forensic anthropology 7 2.1 The role of the forensic anthropologist 7 2.2 Forensic anthropology evidence 8 2.3 Qualifications competency and regulation of forensic anthropology 9 3. Identification of the deceased 10 3.1 Triage 10 3.2 Is it bone? 11
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anthropology called Physical anthropology. In the contemporary context the term Physical anthropology and Biological anthropology are synonymous. Definition of Physical Anthropology: The emergence of anthropology as a branch of science goes back to the remote past. But Aristotle was given the credit in the 16th century only for
Exploring Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Entomology 121 Define the terms : forensic anthropology: and : forensic entomology. 122 Differentiate between a male skeleton and a female skeleton. . Definition should include identifying forensic
bone vs. cortical bone and cancellous bone) in a rabbit segmental defect model. Overall, 15-mm segmental defects in the left and right radiuses were created in 36 New Zealand . bone healing score, bone volume fraction, bone mineral density, and residual bone area at 4, 8, and 12 weeks post-implantation .
Forensic Science is the integration of core scientific disciplines. Forensic science involves a variety of careers. 1. Students will recognize the major contributors to the development of Forensic . Worksheets Lab; Activity Project assessments Research activities such as “famous forensic scientists and their contributions” or “careers inFile Size: 444KBPage Count: 21People also search forforensic science for high school textbook pdfdo forensic criminologist investigate the cri forensic criminology bookswhat is a dental hygienisthow to check fingerprint forensic criminologyare dental hygienists and dentist same thing
Introduction ON THEComparative, Integrative and WAY TO PRET ORIA CONTENTS I Meaning and Natur e of Anthr opology · Etymology and Definitions · Bio-social nature Holistic nature · Anthropology as a Field Science II Major Branches of Anthr opology · Biological Anthropology · Social Cultural Anthropology · Archaeological Anthropology · Linguistic Anthropology
bone matrix (DBX), CMC-based demineralized cortical bone matrix (DB) or CMC-based demineralized cortical bone with cancellous bone (NDDB), and the wound area was evaluated at 4, 8, and 12 weeks post-implantation. DBX showed significantly lower radiopacity, bone volume fraction, and bone mineral density than DB and NDDB before implantation. However,
